Rampage

by John Sandford

  They could hear music and different men speaking, in both English and Spanish, and then, around the front of the building, out of their sight, a door slammed. A man crunched across the gravel driveway and got in a truck they couldn’t yet see, and then headlights came on and a pickup drove in the direction of the farmhouse, where they’d learned about the incoming flights.

  “Bunkhouse,” Cruz breathed.

  “Ranch hands or Singular security?”

  “Don’t know. Sounded like more Spanish than English, so…could be just regular ranch hands.”

  “How many, do you think?”

  “Eight windows, eight rooms…maybe eight more on the other side…so…maybe sixteen?”

  “There’s got to be bathrooms….”

  “Okay, so maybe twelve, with the end windows in the bathrooms. They don’t have separate bathrooms in bunkhouses.”

  —

  They circled away again and saw a long, plain building with at least six vehicle bays. Three of the double-wide garage doors were open; one slot was empty, but in the others they could see the front end of an RV and what looked like an oversized horse trailer.

  “RV—that’s how they were moving the prisoners,” Shay said. “I bet they’re in the building with the barred windows….”

  “Gonna have to watch it in the daylight,” Cruz said, “when people are coming and going.”

  “Why the horse trailer? Have you seen any horses?” Shay asked.

  “No. Maybe it’s just cover—what’s supposed to be here.”

  “Hmm.”

  —

  They made a cut through another stand of piñons and, twenty minutes later, came out a hundred yards or so from the landing strip. All the trees had been cleared within thirty yards on both sides of the strip. Far down to their right, they could see a small building close to the tarmac. They sat and listened for a while.

  “We’d be better off on the other side,” Cruz said.

  “So let’s walk around it,” Shay said. “See what else we can see.”

  Walking the length of the strip took more than an hour. When they finally reached the end of it, they could barely see the lights from the ranch buildings. At the tail end of the strip, down toward the river, they found a burn pit. X made several approaches to it but flinched away, as though his nose was offended. A tall pile of cut wood sat next to it, apparently to keep the trash fires burning.

  They started back toward the ranch houses, now completely invisible in the dark. From the angle of their approach, they could see that the airstrip building had a ramp beside it.

  Shay: “If that’s where the planes park, then we should find a place up there”—she pointed uphill to an area between the strip and the cluster of ranch buildings—“to set up. Get in one of the deep tree clusters.”

  “If somebody walks through there…”

  “But why would they walk through?”

  “I don’t know why they would, but if they did, they’d see us,” Cruz said. “And they’d be between us and the highway.”

  “So we hide Harmon and Danny farther up the hill, deeper in the trees, where they can see down and sideways. If they see somebody heading toward us, they call and we take off.”

  “I don’t know,” Cruz said. “It might be pretty exposed in the daylight.”

  Shay took her cell phone from her pocket, pushed it down inside the front of her jacket so the light wouldn’t show, and checked the time. Two o’clock. “Let’s get the guys and work it out.”

  They were now on the same side of the driveway as Harmon and Danny, but it took fifteen minutes to hook up, and not without a bit of chasing around. The trees were dense enough that in the dark they couldn’t see through them at all, and the sandy soil killed the sound of footsteps.

  When they came together, Harmon said, “We’re three or four hundred yards from the driveway, so we’re well out of sight of the guard…as long as he stays on the drive.”

  Shay and Cruz told the other two about the bunkhouse, about the building with the barred windows, about the garage with the RV and horse trailer, about the landing strip’s parking ramp, and about Cruz’s concern that somebody could stumble on them if they simply plopped down under a tree near the airstrip.

  Harmon said, “I agree with Shay: we need to set up and get photos of anyone getting off the airplanes. It’d also be good if we could see what’s going on around that building with the barred windows—who comes and goes.”

  Danny added, “The two big houses are mostly dark, so we don’t know whether anyone is staying there. We got up close to them, didn’t hear a thing. All we can see is some glow from what look like a few night-lights.”

  “Or alarm panels,” Harmon said.

  “Is there anyplace where we can set up and watch for people who might be coming and going—take their pictures?” Shay asked.

  “One gap between trees,” Danny said. “Looks right down to the parking area, but if they see us, we’re screwed. We’d really be close to the house.”

  “If we can take pictures of people getting out of the planes, maybe we don’t need to shoot them by the house,” Cruz said.

  Harmon nodded, then said he wanted to get a look at the sprawling log house with the SUVs, the building with the barred windows, and the bunkhouse. “Better if I go alone—quieter that way, and I’ve done this before. So. You guys see if you can find a good place to hide with a view of the airstrip. And I like the idea of two of us, or even three of us, watching from higher up the hill. Maybe you could find some potential spots. I’ll try to get back by three o’clock.”

  —

  When Harmon was gone, Shay, Cruz, Danny, and X moved back through the trees and finally found a spot where four piñons had grown close together and a shallow pit had formed in the middle of them. If they were down in the pit, they couldn’t be seen by anybody scanning the ground level.

  “We’re a little far from the plane parking ramp,” Danny said.

  “We’ve got a zoom lens on the camera,” Shay said.

  “Yeah, well, you’d be surprised at how little zoom you really get,” Danny said. “Still, this looks like the best there is.”

  After agreeing that they could use the pit for cover, they clicked Harmon and told him approximately where he might find them. Then they moved back up the hill and found more places where watchers could hide. By spreading three people across the hillside, they would be able to watch the photographer’s back without being seen themselves.

  That done, they all walked to the pit to wait. At three, Harmon still hadn’t returned. Shay and Cruz were huddled together with X, all of them dozing, while Danny sat up on watch. Suddenly X was up, nosing Shay, and Shay’s eyes popped open. X growled, and Shay touched his back. He went silent, and then they heard Harmon say in a low voice, “Don’t let that mutt bark at me.”

  When he was down in the pit with them, he said, “That log house—I think that’s where the security guys hang out. The gun guys. There are three SUVs total: two there and one near the building with the bars. I’m thinking there are three teams of two, two guys per SUV, and they’re guarding the barred building in three shifts. That’s six guys with guns. It’s possible that a couple more came with the RV, so there could be eight or nine. The log house looks like it could probably sleep eight.

  “I think the bunkhouse is for the regular ranch hands, though it’s hard to tell how regular they might be. There’s a horse trailer, but no horses I can see. And a ranch hand with a gun can kill you as dead as a SEAL, if he shoots you.

  “The place with the barred windows—I got my ear right up against it and heard somebody moaning. Didn’t quit—it was exactly like on the ship,” Harmon said.

  He concluded: “Bottom line: there are a lot of bad guys here and a bunch of them are going to be well trained and most of them will have guns. Altogether, ex-military and ranch hands, could be twenty of them.”

  “Want a gun now, Danny?” Shay asked.

  “No. I still
don’t. But I would like to run away about now,” Danny said.

  Shay patted his arm and turned back to Harmon. “So what do you think?” she asked him.

  “I think we hide as best we can, take some pictures tomorrow morning, then try to sneak away. We need to talk to Twist and the others, see what they think. But I gotta tell you guys, this looks tough. Don’t know how we can get the prisoners out of here without getting killed. But we’ve got all night to think on it….”

  They’d scouted out the ranch buildings and the airstrip, and from what they’d seen on the satellite photos, there wasn’t much else around, so they walked up the hill, away from the ranch buildings and the airstrip, and huddled in a heavy stand of piñons, trying to get some sleep before daylight.

  X settled behind Shay’s head, like a warm, furry pillow.

  When Shay felt X stir, and opened her eyes, a thin dawn light was creeping across the desert. It’d be a while before they’d see the sun, but they wouldn’t need the night-vision glasses anymore.

  Harmon was next to her, sitting upright, sound asleep. She nudged him, and his eyes popped open. She tipped her head at X, who was now standing up, focused on the ranch buildings.

  “I’ll take a look,” Shay whispered.

  Harmon nodded and yawned, and Shay eased across the slope, trailed by X. A garage door rolled up. She couldn’t see it, only heard it. An engine fired, a thick, rough noise unlike a car or a motorcycle, and began moving.

  She hurried back to the group, now all awake, and said, “Something’s coming this way.”

  “That’s a problem,” Danny said.

  Harmon walked down the slope a few yards to listen, then said, “Not exactly toward us. He’s angling down below us, maybe headed to the airstrip.”

  “Picking up somebody from the plane?” Cruz suggested.

  “Could be, but it’s still pretty dim out here. No lights on the airstrip.”

  The sound of the engine still seemed to be getting closer. When it passed them, two hundred yards down the slope, running along the edge of the airstrip, they caught a glimpse of a green utility-style vehicle, like a small pickup, with two seats in the front. It was driven by a man in a cowboy hat. There was a black bag in the back of the vehicle, and Shay said, “Burning trash. There’s a trash-burning place at the end of the airstrip. We passed it last night.”

  Harmon said quickly, “Cruz, you go right up the slope from here, fifty yards or so, and face the driveway. Danny, you stay right here, watch down the slope. Shay and I are gonna run. You see anybody coming, click us.”

  Cruz started to object, but Harmon said, “No! Don’t have time to argue. Shay, get your pack—we’ll need the binoculars and the camera. Let’s go….”

  Danny: “What’s happening, man?”

  Harmon had his rifle over his shoulder and was looking down the slope. “Garbage bags are round. That one looked flat.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It looked like a body bag,” Harmon said. To Shay: “C’mon, c’mon….”

  —

  To avoid being seen, they had to keep a screen of piñons between themselves and the man in the vehicle, but they also needed to move fast. When they were fully covered, they ran. When there were gaps in the trees, they watched for a few seconds and then moved on, dodging between trees, always looking around for other movement, other eyes.

  After four or five minutes of this, Harmon jerked an arm up, calling a halt. Shay, breathing hard, said, “I gotta get in better shape.”

  “Not today,” Harmon said. “Let’s slow it down. There’s not much between us now. We want to get where we’ve got a clear shot of him. Hang on to X.”

  The dog glanced up when he heard his name, then looked back toward the burn pit. Shay peered around the edge of a piñon, saw that the man was out of the vehicle, throwing logs off the pile of firewood.

  “He’s looking away from us: we can get closer.”

  Now it was tree-to-tree creeping. They were eighty yards out when they got a click on the walkie-talkie. Harmon double-clicked back, and Cruz said, “We don’t think they’re coming toward you, but there’s some movement around the houses. Lots of guys getting up.”

  Harmon: “Got it. We’re getting in close here. Keep watching.”

  Seventy yards out, X now fully alert, staying at Shay’s knee. One last tree, and they had a clear line to the man. He was taking off a jean jacket. He tossed it on the passenger seat of the utility vehicle and went back to throwing logs.

  The logs were all piñon, as thick as Harmon’s upper arm and six or seven feet long. The man laid down a crisscross pattern, eight logs on the bottom, crossed by eight more on top, crossed by eight more on top of those, and then eight more.

  As he did it, Shay watched with binoculars, and Harmon took photos with the digital camera. “He’s a long way out—his head’s about the size of a pin on the view screen,” he whispered. “I hope we can identify him in the prints.”

  Shay: “There’s a dial on the back. You can enlarge the image on the screen, see what it’ll look like when it’s enlarged.”

  Harmon looked down at the camera, messed with the dial for a moment, then said, “Okay…Not bad. Not bad.”

  When the man had a pile of logs about waist-high, he horsed the black bag out of the utility vehicle and onto the pile of logs, Harmon taking pictures as he did. Then he went back to the firewood, piling more layers over the bag.

  Shay muttered, “Are you sure…?”

  “It’s not a garbage bag. I’ve seen all kinds of body bags, and that was a body bag, and there’s a body in it.”

  “Aw, jeez, what am I doing here?”

  Harmon looked at her. “Don’t freak out on me.”

  “All right, but I’m gonna freak out later,” Shay said.

  “I’ll freak out with you,” Harmon said.

  —

  The pile of logs grew, then the man, wiping his forehead on his shirtsleeve, went to the utility vehicle and took out a can of gasoline. Walking around the pile of logs, he poured gasoline over it, the odor seeping across the ground to Shay, Harmon, and X.

  That done, he put the can back in the vehicle, took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, walked maybe fifteen feet from the pile, lit the cigarette, took a couple of long drags, then snapped it into the logs. The pile exploded in flames ten, fifteen feet high.

  The man walked to the utility vehicle and backed it away from the fire, out of the heat, then took a magazine off the passenger seat, got out, propped himself against the vehicle’s hood, and began flipping through the magazine.

  “They’re burning the experimental subjects,” Shay said. “The subjects are dying, and they’re cremating them.”

  “That’s what I’d say, too,” Harmon said. “C’mon. We won’t get anything more here—let’s head back.”

  The day was getting brighter: not a cloud in the sky, and no shade outside the small spots thrown by the trees. They backed away from the fire and the man monitoring it. They were a hundred yards out when X pricked up his ears and turned back toward the fire, working his nose.

  Then Shay smelled it and wiped her hand across her nose.

  Harmon looked at her and said, “Yeah. That’s what it smells like. Barbecue.”

  “That’s awful,” she said.

  “Keep moving.”

  —

  The odor of the fire moved faster than they did. When they moved the last few yards across the hillside to where Danny was hidden, he asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yeah,” Harmon said. “We need to stay here, see what they do with the ashes. If they scrape them into the river, it’ll be a problem. If they leave them there…Bodies are hard to get rid of. You can usually find some sign of them, even after cremation. Find one little piece of bone, and a lab can prove it’s human.”

  “Twist will cruise the place at eight o’clock,” Shay said. “We ought to get the camera’s memory card out to him so Odin or Cade can park the pictures in
the cloud.”

  —

  Shay went up the hill with X, found Cruz, brought him back down, told him about the fire. Cruz turned as grim as Danny had. “Anything that happens to these people, they deserve. Anything.”

  Shay had the sense that things were moving now, that the pace would pick up. She was wrong.

  They sat in the trees for another hour and nothing happened. They ate energy bars and drank water and nothing happened. Nobody went to the airstrip. They heard trucks and SUVs going up and down the driveway, but there was nothing they could do about that. Someplace off toward the ranch complex, somebody started a weed cutter. In the other direction, the smoke from the fire gradually diminished. The man who’d built it stayed where he was, watching, reading his magazine.

  Then, a little after seven o’clock, an SUV rolled past on the airstrip and stopped directly below them, next to the building. A minute later, they heard a plane.

  The plane, a red and silver twin prop, flew parallel to the runway, a few hundred feet up, and tipped toward it, giving the pilot a better look, then continued past the end of the strip and out of sight.

  “Making his approach turn,” Harmon said.

  The sound of the engine dwindled to nearly nothing, then, a minute later, began getting louder. When they saw the plane again, it was no more than a hundred feet up, a half mile or so south of the strip. It touched down easily, swept past the ramp, pivoted on the turning pad at the end of the strip, and returned to the parking area.

  A set of steps dropped down from a side door, and a passenger clambered out. He looked like an accountant on holiday: a pudgy man dressed in a blue golf shirt, jeans, and a gold-colored ball cap carrying a briefcase. He stopped to say something to the pilot.

  “Wonder who he is,” Shay said. “Doesn’t look that important.”

  “What does important look like?” Danny asked. He was using the binoculars. “Notice that his jeans have a crease.”

  “What does that mean?” Harmon asked.

  “It means he has a maid,” Danny said. “You’re not supposed to iron jeans, but maids do it anyway. He’s important enough to have a maid.”